1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer software, and more particularly to integrating Web Services in business systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
The term Web Services has quickly become a buzzword in the market. There are true successes, and also much hype about Web Services technology solutions. Much of the market hype focuses on what it can do, rather than on integration. Some generalize that Web Services technology can address all types of business problems. Web Services technologies are a good technology enabler for legacy system integration and cross-platform interoperability, but may not necessarily be the perfect solution to all types of business problems. Such Web Services interest has coincided with the proliferation of XML and Java technology and Business-to-Business (B2B) commerce. The key attraction of Web Services comes from the business drivers of cost reduction and B2B integration. There are many aspects of the changing economic landscape and emerging trends that support the potential use of Web Services, especially in the financial services and B2B commerce areas.
Web Services technology and associated vendor products have evolved greatly over the past few years, from SOAP 1.0 to SOAP 1.2. New related technologies emerge from time to time, such as the earlier releases of the Java Web Services Developer Pack™ (including JAX Pack) and Apache Axis. Java™ has become the de facto lingua franca of Web Services. Previously, developers needed to build their own application infrastructure tools to handle security, exceptions, and logging. They also needed to write programming routines to handle message acknowledgement and exception handling routines to ensure SOAP messages were reliably exchanged. Today, new Web Services tools such as Java Web Services Developer Pack™ and Apache Axis provide many built-in Web Services security features, SOAP messaging capabilities, and SOAP server infrastructure tools. These technologies have changed the previous Web Services programming model and landscape.
Web Services technologies enable the reuse of business functionality provided by mainframes and legacy systems. They help protect past investments of business functionality developed on legacy and proprietary platforms and ease building “killer” applications based on existing customer and account data kept by these legacy systems. “Killer” applications may create user stickiness by aggregating useful and timely customer and account information from different data sources that may run on legacy systems using Web Services as the technology enabler.
Many systems are deployed without a reliable, scalable architecture and thus suffer from capacity and performance issues. Some of them do not have reusable components. Many Web Services initiatives begin and end with SOAP-UDDI programming yet lack a framework for reusable components, scalability, and performance management. Therefore, it may be desirable to provide a generic Web Services solution that leverages application component framework and technical infrastructure investment by focusing on opportunities that can leverage reusable components and that leverages limited component frameworks, distributed services, and platform and network engineering resources.
There are prior art architectures labeled under Web Services. There are Web Services architectures published by various technology vendors. These architectures include, but are not limited to, Sun ONE™ Architecture Framework, IBM's Web Services Architecture, and Microsoft's Global XML Web Services Architecture. At least some other prior art architectures are primarily a rebranding of vendor product architectures. Prior art Web Services architectures generally lack structure and guiding principles; a product architecture that lacks structure and guiding principles is not useful for scalable and reliable Web Services.
Prior art Web Services literature typically addresses how to build SOAP programs or lab prototypes. There are Web Services architectures available in the prior art, but these are typically vendor product architectures, rather than generic Web Services reference architectures. Therefore, it may be desirable to provide a generic Web Services solution to interoperate with legacy mainframe applications and/or to integrate with Business-to-Business applications.
Web Services Related Technologies
eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a tag language, derived from the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and endorsed by W3C, to describe business data in human-eligible format and is intended to facilitate machine-to-machine or system-to-system communication over the Internet. The XML data construct can be defined and validated (with XML parsers) by XML 1.0 syntax (for example, Document Type Definitions [DTDs]), XML Namespaces, or XML Schemas.
DTDs specify rules about the tag names, data structure (for example, string), and permissible elements (for example, repeatable elements). DTDs can be stand-alone or incorporated in an XML document.
An XML Namespace is a collection/group of names—i.e. a prefix added to XML element to differentiate elements with the same name (such as name, customer:name, or buyer:name). Using a unique element, this addresses conflicting names while exchanging XML documents with partners. It is identified by a URI reference, qualified names/elements, and attribute names within an XML document (such as buyer:trade-Header). The syntax is: xmins:_Namespace prefix_URI—
An XML Schema is a more general and flexible way to describe the data structure of an XML document (for example, data type or attributes). Although not required, SOAP uses XML Schema instead of DTD to represent data in the SOAP requests and responses. SOAP can use XML Schema to serialize/deserialize data from parameters to method calls and returned values.
XML documents are usually validated by XML parsers for their well-formedness. There are three major types of parsers:
Document Object Model (DOM)
Simple API for XML
JDOM
Java™ is a platform independent programming language. Java has a “sandbox” architecture that has inherent application security. On the enterprise level, Java 2 Enterprise Edition™ (J2EE™) is the building block for components and integration points. Both Java and .NET have similar programming strengths. Java™ is more popular with cross-platform deployment consideration, yet .NET is also now available on Linux.
The Java™ XML Pack (JAX Pack) is an all-in-one download of Java technologies for XML. Java™ XML Pack brings together several of the key industry standards for XML—such as SAX, DOM, XSLT, SOAP, UDDI, ebXML, and WSDL—into one convenient download, thereby giving developers the technologies needed to get started with Web applications and services.
JAX Pack is a bag of Java-based APIs for developing and managing XML, SOAP, and UDDI:
JAXP—Java API for Parsers
JAXM—Java API for Messaging
JAXB—Java API for Binding
JAXR—Java API for Registries
JAX-RPC—Java API for RPC
JAX Pack is a reference implementation for JAX, and is now part of Sun's Java Web Services Developer Pack.
JAXP is a lightweight Java API library for parsing and transforming XML documents. It is a high-level wrapper for different parsers; it can use Xerces or Crimson as the underlying parser. It allows parsing of an XML document using:
Event-driven (SAX 2.0)
Tree-based (DOM Level 2)
XML documents transformation
XML to XML/other data format using XSL/XSLT
Rendering to PDF or graphics using Cocoon
JAXP provides an interface layer to XML parsers. The reference parser is Apache Crimson, but developers can use other parsers such as Apache Xerces. The reference parser supports both event-driven (SAX) and tree-based XML parsing (DOM).
SAX performs well-formedness validation of XML documents. It can be used for reading specific elements. SAX is based on a specific event and enables sequential read access only (that is, one-time access). The strength of SAX is that documents do not have to be entirely in memory, thus it is fast and efficient. However, it cannot modify elements of the XML document. To parse an XML document, developers define a Java class that extends the DefaultHandler, which will create a new instance of SAXParserFactory. The SAXParserFactory provides handlers such as startElement, endElement, and characters to process different events during the parsing.
The Document Object Model (DOM) is an API for processing XML documents. It defines the logical structure of documents and a way to access and manipulate the documents. The strengths of DOM are that DOM can build documents, navigate their structure while in memory, and DOM can add, modify, or delete elements or content of the XML document. However, the in-memory processing is resource-hungry. To parse an XML document, developers need to define a Java class to create an instance of DocumentBuilderFactory, which will create a new object DocumentBuilder. The DocumentBuilder will then create nodes (objects in the DOM) for different XML elements and tags.
JAXM refers to the Java technology support for sending and receiving SOAP messages, which is based on the SOAP 1.1 and the SOAP with Attachment specifications. It supports higher level and application-specific protocols built on top of SOAP, including multiple transports such as HTTP, SMTP, and so forth. In addition, JAXM supports both synchronous (request-reply) and asynchronous (one-way) mode. JAXM is preferable to JAX-RPC because of its support for asynchronous messaging, multiparty message routing, and reliable messaging (that is, guaranteed delivery). JAXM is a pluggable provider class for the SOAP server. The provider class supports different data transports, such as HTTP, SMTP, and JMS. For example, if Company X sends a SOAP message using a SOAP provider over HTTP to Company Y, the JAXM provider will create a connection to the specified URL endpoint with Company A's SOAP provider, create a SOAP message instance, and get the SOAP envelope and body. With JAXM, developers can make SOAP messaging reliable with message acknowledgement and guaranteed message delivery using JMS.
JAXB denotes Java Architecture for XML Binding. JAXB creates an XML-to-Java binding schema (XJS), which maps XML elements to Java objects, and stores it in XJS files (.xjs extension). You can compile them with a schema compiler called xjc and output the source code to a set of Java classes for marshalling and unmarshalling. An XML-to-Schema Compiler (xjc) is a Unix shell script that invokes com.sun.tools.xjc.Main, which reads in a DTD and a XJS binding schema, and generates a set of Java source files. An XJS binding schema file defines the mapping.
In the JAXB architecture, the utility xjc creates Java source files to bind a DTD or XML Schema to Java data objects. Developers can then add additional program code if necessary and compile the Java source files into Java classes for execution. This can potentially reduce some coding effort and processing time to transcode XML elements in an XML document using JAXP. JAXB version 1.0 supports both DTD and XML Schema. Developers can use the same xjc compiler to generate Java binding files for an XML Schema under Windows or Unix. Using JAXB to bind an XML Schema to the Java data structure, developers can probably write less program code using an XML parser (such as DOM or SAX) to transform XML content into Java data objects. This is a considerable benefit to the productivity.
JAXR is a standard Java API for accessing diverse and heterogeneous Business Service Registries. It is a unified information model for describing business registry content. It provides multi-layered API abstractions for simple, high-level, business API, and flexible, low-level, generic API. It is the enabling technology for Web Services and peer-to-peer computing in the J2EE™. In the JAXR architecture, a JAXR client is basically a registry client (RC) that is connected to the registry service (RS) via a JAXR pluggable provider. The JAXR provider is able to use any capability-specific interfaces such as ebXML provider or UDDI provider that is specific to a particular Service Registry platform. Developers can also write their own JAXR provider class to accommodate any new Service Registry platform. In this way, the JAXR client only needs to use one single set of program code to access different service registries; it need not be rewritten and recompiled.
JAX-RPC stands for Java API for XML-based Remote Procedure Calls (RPC). JAX-RPC enables Java technology developers to build Web applications and Web Services incorporating XML-based RPC functionality according to the SOAP 1.1 specification. JAX-RPC allows distributed client/server mode over the Web using the Standard Web Services technologies: SOAP, WSDL, and HTTP. Using the JAX-RPC API and the tools, it simplifies the creation of a Web Service for a Java programmer as it hides all the complexities of generating SOAP and WSDL, but provides tools to generate these using Java Interfaces and some additional configuration information. All the code to map Java data type information to XML/SOAP is generated by the tools “wscompile” and “wsdeploy” from Java Web Services Developer Pack (JWSDP) 1.0.1 (which supersedes the tool “xrpcc” in JWSDP 1.0). The JAX-RPC runtime will take care of the transport. In the JAX-RPC architecture, in order to invoke a remote business service, the client program needs to install a “stub,” which enables it to communicate with the remote application service via the remote “ties.” Both the client and the remote server (services) need to install JAX-RPC runtime, which enables both ends to exchange SOAP messages. This is a typical Remote Procedure Call model.
Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) typically denotes a Service Registry such as a business Yellow Page for an e-business service. It also denotes a standard specification for service discovery and description. There are at least three public operator nodes: Microsoft, IBM, and Ariba. SAP provides a public UDDI node as well.
The UDDI registry enables businesses/corporations to register public information about themselves (such as service type, products, URL) and provides service categories or classifications using standards code such as NAICS (North American Industry Classification System, a product code classification system for trading used by the U.S. Census Bureau) and UN/SPSC (United Nation Standard Products and Services Classification, a product classification system developed by Dun & Bradstreet).
There are primarily three types of information: (1) White Pages—business names, description, contact information; (2) Yellow Pages—business categories using standard codes such as NAICS, UN/SPSC, and geographical taxonomy; and (3) Green Pages—information model to store implementation information of business processes, service descriptions, and binding information. The UDDI information model is a data model that encapsulates the business information of business organizations and service details.
In UDDI, a business entity contains the definition of business services (White Pages), and each business service contains a binding template (Yellow Pages) that shows the service end-points URL. The information in the binding template is also stored in the UDDI information model tModel and tModelInstance objects, which are accessed during the service discovery process. The same information in the binding template is also referenced in the Implementation section of the WSDL document (Green Pages). The Implementation section is also referenced in the Interface section of the WSDL document. If developers want to store the WSDL document in the UDDI Service Registry, they can reference the Interface section in the tModel object.
SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. The original specification has three parts: extensible envelope (headers and body), simple type marshalling schema, and HTTP RPC protocol. The SOAP RPC layer acts as a client proxy that initiates SOAP calls, creates SOAP envelope and message body, and exchanges with the SOAP server. The logical components of the “tier” are elaborated as the SOAP server. The SOAP server handles message routing, marshals, and unmarshals the SOAP messages via RPC router servlet and message router servlet (these are transport listeners). All SOAP messages are transported on top of HTTP or HTTPs, and can even be bound to JMS using customized pluggable providers.
The SOAP client sends a SOAP RPC request to the RPC router servlet. The RPC router servlet looks up the Deployment Descriptor from the service manager. Upon successful retrieval, the RPC router servlet locates the configuration details and passes the request to appropriate pluggable provider. For instance, the pluggable provider is an EJB provider, and it invokes the remote business service via RMI/IIOP protocol.
Web Services Description Language (WSDL) uses XML to describe Web Services by:                End-points operating on SOAP messages        SOAP messages containing either document-oriented (for example, XML doc) or procedure-oriented information (for example, XML-RPC)        Operations and messages        Bindings of network protocol and message format to end-points        
WSDL also defines network accessible services functionality, such as protocol and deployment details. It is submitted to W3 as a basis for XMLP Web Service metadata definition. In a WSDL document, the service (service endpoint URL), operation name (the remote business service), message name (input or output), and the type (data type) are usually of interest to developers, as they are the key information to build a Web Services client.
WSDL documents can be stored in the UDDI registry. There is a close relationship between the UDDI information model and the WSDL documents. SOAP clients look up the UDDI registry for a specific business service and find the service key and the associated service end-points from the WSDL or the tModel. Then they can invoke the business service remotely. In a WSDL document, the service name is mapped to the BusinessService attribute of a tModel, the port name to the BindingTemplate, and the service interface section to the tModel and tModelInstanceInfo attributes.
Electronic Business XML Markup Language (ebXML) is an international initiative to define a framework for finding, exchanging, developing, and implementing business services. It focuses on B2B and Small Medium Enterprise needs, and is backed up by standards bodies (such as OASIS, UN CE/FACT) and communities (such as the Open Applications Group or OAG).
As an example of using ebXML, two business applications may want to exchange business documents in a reliable manner. Both ends need to establish a trading partner agreement (e.g. using CPP, CPA) prior to document exchange. The sender business application initiates a connection, sends the business documents in ebXML manifest (which is wrapped in a SOAP envelope using SOAP 1.1 with Attachment), and waits for message acknowledgement from the recipient business application. The ebXML architecture also allows business process collaboration using a business process specification shared between the business applications.
A typical ebXML message makes use of the SOAP messaging as the transport and routing protocol. An ebXML message may include a payload (usually called Manifest), which is wrapped by a SOAP envelope (including a SOAP envelope and SOAP body). ebXML encapsulates the SOAP envelope and the payload under a MIME structure, and thus allows capturing either text or binary objects (such as a picture, or an EDI message) in the payload.
Currently, Service Registry has two variants: UDDI and ebXML. OASIS supports both variants. UDDI Service Registry has been on the market for some time. IBM, Microsoft, HP, and SAP manage the public UDDI Service Registry nodes. Although they are intended to be a public Service Registry, most people use them for testing instead. There are also a few open-source implementations of UDDI Service Registries, including UDDI registry from Sun's Java Web Services Developer Pack. Most J2EE™ Application Server vendors also provide UDDI Service Registry. ebXML Service Registry is a standards-based Service Registry. Its functionality is similar to UDDI. In addition, it supports service contracts (that is, CPA, CPP) and workflow-related entities (as per ebXML specifications).